By Gus Saltonstall
Over the years, we have received a handful of questions about the eye-catching doors on the other side of the tracks within the 1, 2, and 3 train station at West 72nd Street and Broadway.
Last week, Robert Sietsema, the longtime New York City food critic, posed the question on social media.
“Anyone notice the tiny ornate door on the other side of the tracks at the 72nd St. IRT station? A hobbit door to the Shire?”
While he was specifying one door, there are actually multiple of these doors on both the uptown and downtown sides of the Upper West Side station.
“Spent my whole life wondering what’s behind there,” one person wrote in response to Sietsema’s post.
Another commenter responded, “Gotta be Robert Moses’ crypt.”
While the doors have an undeniable fantastical element to them, the reality of what they hide is somewhat underwhelming.
“The doors at the 72nd St 123 station are utility closets that contain cables,” a spokesperson for the MTA told West Side Rag.
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“The doors at the 72nd St 123 station are utility closets that contain cables,”
I choose to believe that it’s Lex Luthor’s hideout from the Christoper Reeve superman movie.
I concur
You beat me to it— great comment!
that was under grand central
He had to move, even Lex can’t afford Midtown East rents these days!
Trump paid for that station to get rehabbed and expanded as part of his development by the river, so it figures that a basic utility door would have a gold hue.
The door obviously pre-dates that.
I recall it appearing when the station was overhauled in 2000
More info on the overhaul/history here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/72nd_Street_station_(IRT_Broadway%E2%80%93Seventh_Avenue_Line)
and be virtually useless
This is a winning comment, bravo 🙂
This door leads to regional headquarters for sock stealing elves. I was given a tour once coming home from a club at 4am when I caught an elf entering.
It’s actually not too exciting. A long passage and then a series of mid sized rooms. Low ceilings. Socks everywhere! Elves sitting around sorting and grading socks while chatting.
The elves have tunnels to UWS laundry rooms and laundromats where they steal socks and then bring them to this station for processing and shipment. I was told it’s a fairly lucrative business but the elves refused to explain what exactly the socks were used for.
Anyways, if your socks have gone missing don’t bother knocking on the door trying to find them. Socks are processed very quickly and leave the UWS in a matter of hours.
They are traded on the New York Sock Exchange
And I always thought missing socks were taken by the sock monster who sold them to Jersey chop shops that used them to polish and buff stolen vehicles after their “makeovers” and before they were shipped overseas.
genius!!!!!!!
They convert the socks to golfclub covers for the idle rich on Lawn Guyland.
Best comment EVER! 🙂
We’ll have to disagree on that. Jeez.
The real question, then, is why are they so wonderful–bronze and highly decorated. When the station was built, were the doors meant to hide cables then?
Because it was built in 1904.
Along somewhat similar (but less ornate) lines, at the very back of the downtown-bound N platform @ 59 & Lex, if you look across the tracks there’s a little platform with a weird raised middle section, two steps up/down on either end and a yellow railing alongside them.
Looking even more closely, what you’ll discover is that the “wall” beneath that tiny overpass is false, and peeking out from behind it is a mass of arm-thick electrical cables for the third rail system. There must be dozens of them all routed below that platform, carrying enough voltage to kill you so hard your body is completely vaporized.
How much is cooper and bronze worth nowadays?
Don’t give anyone any ideas 🙁
…but what a classy, beautiful way to disguise a utility closet!!!
I think the response is hysterical. So bland, so nothing, the doors are beautiful, the response funny
Anti climatic to say the least
I always figured it was some electrical thing. The whole system is one big electric train set.
Or Lex Luthor who knows.
Just a few of the cables inside:
“Successful four flights Thursday morning… Inform Press. Home Christmas”.- Wright Brothers
“What hath God wrought?” – Samuel Morse
“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated” – Mark Twain
“We are sinking fast. Passengers are being put into boats. Titanic.”
Also found there: cables between George Bernard Shaw and Winston Churchill.
Shaw to Churchill: “I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend… if you have one.”
Churchill’s response: “Cannot possibly attend first night; will attend second, if there is one.”
Even if an anecdote, still wonderful.
An anecdote can be true. An *apocryphal* story is of doubtful authenticity. (I want the West Side Rag’s grammarian job!)
They only WANT you to believe that these are utility closets containing cables … I still think they are portals to another universe. Or the doors to the vault of hidden treasures. Or both. Can be both. Love these kinda’ finds!
It would be interesting to see what the history of the building is. That may tell us what the doors were for.
Perhaps it’s for the classier rats that frequent the subway system.
My question is about the room that looks like someone’s apt facing the southbound side at 96th. Is that someone’s apt that looks into the station? There are records lining the windows.
Pretty sure its an MTA office! I was on the train once when there were people working inside and we waved at each other
That’s where the subway elves live
Don’t lie, I’ve seen Umpaloompas come out of it…
It’s where the king and queen of rats go to sleep after eating up the city garbage
Just realized this has to be the entrance to Sarastro’s lair in The Magic Flute.
It sounds like Mr. Saltonstall may not have read or seen The Hobbit or LOTR. Otherwise he would know that hobbits live in holes, and that all their doors are circular.
It’s the super secret entrance to UNCLE hq. that only Mr. Waverly uses. (Yes, there are others aside from the tailor shoppe).
The subway one was referenced in, umm, one of the books when Waverly told Solo how to sneak out. (Afraid I don’t recall which one).